[Vwdiesel] Insert Cuss Words Here... Long, sad story

[Dave Cook]

So I got the TDI bus running the other day and have been driving it around the past few days without any issue.

Today, I ran out of fuel.  (Whoops!  Gotta fix the fuel gauge!)  The AAA provider doesn't carry diesel, so they towed me home.  Where I added the gallon and a half or so of fuel I had in the garage, started it up and left for the city-league kickball game I was running late for.  

On the way, it acted like it ran out of fuel again.  The little bit I put in must have not really been enough to make it to the fuel outlet in the tank, leaving me blocking traffic at an intersection with construction.  Judas.  A guy walking down the sidewalk helped me push it to a safe parking spot. I was close to the kickball game, so I just walked there and got a ride home to get more, and got it going.  No big deal, really.

So I went home and installed the larger tires on the back, and went for a test drive to see how it affected the RPMs.  Turned out the big tires helped quite a bit and I was pretty pleased.

The engine died as I was headed out of town.  But I was able to restart it and head back.

Again, it died again.  As it did, it made an expensive-sounding noise, and I saw oil sprayed in the engine compartment.  Hitting the starter produced a clunk.  Here is where the cuss words go.

After the second tow home today, I crawled around under and above the engine.  I thought I saw a hole in the block at one point, but from above I can't spot it, and I think it was the back of a bracket that I was seeing.  


What I did find is that the engine got extremely hot!  The brand-new crank case vent pipe I installed the other day melted!  I saw what looked like melted plastic on the glow plug wires too.  Goodness it was hot! 


Apparently, I somehow lost most or all of my coolant.  I was befuddled on how that happened, because I never heard hissing, saw clouds of steam, or anything else really.  I looked closely for leaks all over on the initial start ups, as well as checking fro drips, etc several times.  The answer came as I moved a coolant hose trying to inspect the block.  As I did, I heard  a noise of pressure releasing.  


On the head outlet flange to the radiator, there was a nipple.  A (generic) diagram showed this nipple as going to the overflow tank, but the hoses I had didn't seem to back that up, so long before installing the engine, I hooked up a hose to it and blew into it, and it seemed blocked.  So I figured it was never hooked up to anything and this bleed nipple was only open and used on some cars.

It seems that instead, it should have always been open but was partially clogged and would only released water when the system was under full pressure.  And it was probably a small stream, hence me never noticing a cloud of steam or anything of that nature.


Awesome.  I'll see if it'll turn over in the morning.  I'm hoping it just got real hot and I'll get lucky and it was a "soft" seize and letting it cool off and getting an oil change will help out...  The "expensive" noise wasn't real metallic sounding, and maybe it was pressure relieving through the melted CCV pipe.  Here's hoping.


Time for another beer.

 
Dave Cook